How Syria Could Weather an Airstrike Without Even Shooting Back

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is reportedly hiding in a bunker, expecting American and French missiles to sail into Syria as punishment for his regime's alleged use of chemical weapons. What can he do about it, besides dispatching his diplomats—and relying on Russia's—to influence world opinion and prevent an attack? He actually has a few options on the ground to consider.

Even in the age of precision airstrikes and satellite imagery, fairly inexpensive decoys can fool incoming cruise missiles and aircraft-launched bombs.

There are several reasons why decoys are a problem for U.S. and French war planners in Syria. One is Russian involvement in supplying Assad's regime. The Russian company Rusbal sells inflatable tanks, antiaircraft missiles, and radar that could have been transferred to Syria. We saw such decoy systems firsthand during a trip to a Russian arms show. Rusbal is just one vendor of decoys—there are certainly other, less well-known versions.

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Modern decoys are more than mere shells or balloons. They are made to fool sensors as well as eyeballs. Rusbal calls them "dummies able to simulate real equipment in visible, near infrared, thermal and radio ranges of electromagnetic waves." That covers just about all the satellite- and missile-guidance systems out there, except the rare hyperspectral sensor in space. Rusbal also sells radar simulators that could come in handy if the U.S. launches long-range air-to-ground missiles that home in on such emissions. (PM contacted Rusbal for details on a statement on their website sayng they have sold military decoys to international customers, on the off chance they'd say if they sold any to Syria, but we have not received a reply. The Russian government would have to clear and coordinate such a sale via its national export company, Rosoboronexport.)

How effective are decoys? Although their efficacy is often overstated, the Serbs did use them to decent effect during NATO's Kosovo air campaign. During that 1999 operation, NATO was spooked by antiaircraft weapons and kept its strike aircraft at an altitude of 15,000 feet or more. Analysts say this contributed to pilots bombing more phony targets. The same could be true in Syria because of the limits the Obama administration says it will put on its airstrikes. The proposed campaign in Syria would rely on cruise missiles and airplanes at "stand-off" distances, meaning that onboard targeting would not be available. (Even if a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber were equipped with such systems, those aircraft are not used to collect intelligence and images, but to hit targets and leave.) Syrian radar is certainly good enough to spot fixed-wing drones flying over targets, so you can rule them out too.

The real lesson on Kosovo: The longer you bomb, the more accurate the bombs tend to be. But in a limited-strike scenario, time is not on the attacker's side.

2) Misdirection

President Obama has been firm about not putting American troops on the ground in Syria. One consequence of that is a lack of intelligence from trusted sources. A clever Syrian operative could contaminate the targeting process so that bombs fall on empty deserts, rebel positions, or civilian areas. (Dead civilians would be used to galvanize international opposition to the strikes.)

How could they do it? Airstrikes are built by a team using reports from intelligence analysts. This intel determines if a target is going to be hit, and from what direction and with what ordnance. This plan includes specific aim points for the strike aircraft. It's up to the CIA and Syrian opposition groups to produce this intel, which raises the possibility of any number of ugly incidents: simple mistakes by rookie rebels, inter-rebel rivalries leading to phony claims of Assad support, and Syrian double agents who feed misinformation through the rebels to the Pentagon planners. Syria is a cauldron of proxy-war espionage, and any human intel can be hard to trust.

There is also the question of aim. Military controllers can use lasers and radios to designate targets, but rebels would not be able to provide the same guidance. In Libya, U.S. warplanes coordinated with European special-forces air controllers on the ground. But NATO is not part of this coalition. And even with that assistance, airstrikes in Libya suffered several targeting failures. One of them destroyed the home of El-Khweldi El-Hamedi, a retired major general. Rebel fighters said the general and his sons were commanders directing operations in western Libya, according to The New York Times. NATO did not discover this was false until after it had hit the home with eight bombs, killing more than a dozen innocents (the retired general survived). The Libyans used the errant attack as propaganda.

If such a thing happened in Syria, Assad could bolster opposition to any further action after the bombings' end and pose as a victim. This would aid his position in any diplomatic settlement of the civil war which, as improbable as that outcome seems, is a stated goal of the Obama administration.

3) Scatter, Hide, and Hunker

By definition, limited airstrikes can't destory every Syrian military asset. The conundrum for Assad is deciding what to hide.

Critical personnel who work at prime, stationary targets—chemical-weapons storage facilities, airfields, command and control centers, and fixed-radar sites— will stay away as much as possible. There's plenty of time to move equipment from these locations too.

Speaking of radar, Assad knows to turn them off as soon as a strike is imminent. Some missiles home in on radar waves to knock those systems out, potentially clearing the way for other aircraft. The more that survive, the more complicated a task planners of future airstrikes will have. Assad's forces may even turn on decoy emitters.

What about tanks, artillery, and armored vehicles? Airstrikes might target some of these units, especially if their commanders have been implicated in the use of chemical attacks. A prudent move for the Assad regime would be to scatter these forces in obscure locations. However, a hiding tank can't fight, and Assad is in the middle of a raging civil war.

If you take the Obama administration's word on keeping the strikes limited, the Assad regime needs only to sit and wait out the attack. With active support of the rebels not on the table, and regime change not a stated goal of the attack, there's not a lot Assad has to do. But he should be wary—the Libya regime change started with a humble no-fly zone that quickly became active support for rebel groups. It's not out of the question that a limited strike could become a "decapitation strike" aimed at taking out the nation's leadership. Assad's best defense against that option is that the sudden collapse of his regime would spark regional chaos and increasing power for radical Islamic groups, which the U.S.and its Middle Eastern allies desperately want to avoid.